MP3's will land ya in jail now?

damnyanks

Just listening to the radio there (FM104). They had some guy on the radio going on about MP3's getting you landed in jail + 1900 fine per song downlaoded!

Or something like that. Was my head in the sand for a while or is this new ? (I knew downloading would be illegal). Didnt know could land you jail time in Ireland

Ahh well...

legend99

we were told in work that IMRO had begun contacting all companies with the threat of trying to go after them.
We were instructed to remove every mp3, wma, etc etc from our computers. Not even allowed copy from a legally bought CD onto our hard drives as this might be looked on as sharing.
Only way to listen to music is to stream it over the net or have the legal CD in your CD drive...

ferdi

ah bollix.

tman

Originally posted by damnyanks
Just listening to the radio there (FM104). They had some guy on the radio going on about MP3's getting you landed in jail + 1900 fine per song downlaoded!

€10,070,000???

/me hastily formats his hard drive

Sarky

To hell with that. All my MP3's are from CDs I bought. I bought a licence to listen to that music, so I'm damn well going to listen to it!

Besides, jail may well be a step up rom where I live right now...

Rabies

Originally posted by Sarky
To hell with that. All my MP3's are from CDs I bought. I bought a licence to listen to that music, so I'm damn well going to listen to it!

Same here. I have the original CD for most my mp3s. Easier to throw them all in to a play list, hit random and away ya go.

damnyanks

Well they arent gonna go after everyone I assume. But they will make examples of a few people I'm sure.

Pacifico

Originally posted by Sarky
To hell with that. All my MP3's are from CDs I bought. I bought a licence to listen to that music, so I'm damn well going to listen to it!

Its Legal isnt it? As long as you dont share them;)

Sure if it was'nt all MP3 players would be Illegal.........

Matt Simis

Originally posted by legend99
we were told in work that IMRO had begun contacting all companies with the threat of trying to go after them.
We were instructed to remove every mp3, wma, etc etc from our computers. Not even allowed copy from a legally bought CD onto our hard drives as this might be looked on as sharing.
Only way to listen to music is to stream it over the net or have the legal CD in your CD drive...

Considering you can now download and purchase content legally, with the same rights as if you purchased the CD, I would say this is bull****. Some ignorant fools getting cold feet no doubt.



Matt

legend99

The problem within a company even if they are on a hard drive it seems is the aspect of sharing.

If there is the slighest wiff of it being a sharing violation then its where the trouble starts.

Means you have to lug CDs in and out of the office to listen to them.

Personally I think IMRO are panicking because its only really when broadband comes in as it is doing right now that MP3 sharing is a live option...impossible really with 56k modems.

I mean like I bought the bloody CD and they are still telling me what to do with it.


On a related note you know. I was at Slane listening to Bono banging on about drop the debt and this and that. Meanwhile U2 are one of the biggest movers behind IMRO and at Slane they were charging about 5 euro for a burger.
Made me sick to the stomach to listen to the irony of Bonos complaints much as I love his music to be going on about debts when people on his behalf were charging me 5 euro for a burger and I was stopped from bringing in water so I could be ripped off more...

sutty

I think their just jumping on the "ban napster" band wagen.... and like everything in Ireland, their behind the times!!!!


First of. If they find out you have MP3's on your PC and you wheren't shareing them. Surely they would have to do a hack of your PC and thus be braking the law them-selfs?


This also reminds me of the whole Licensing thing a few years back. Did that ever happen to anyone? no company I know of anyway.

Syth

Not even allowed copy from a legally bought CD onto our hard drives

In the UK 'media shifting' (where you copy the CD from one form of media to another, eg from CD to MP3), is illlegal even if you legally baught the CD. I don't know abou here in Ireland, though.

tuxy

so why are mp3 players legal in england then?

legend99

Well speed trap detectors are legal in Ireland. Its just illegal to use them!!!!!:)

Lemming

Fair use clauses still exist iirc.

Besides, I'd let them go through the whole charade of court-expenses. Then I'd bring in a wheelbarrow of my rather ... extensive ... music collection which I have legitimately purchased, and tell them that I'm exercising my fair-use rights and they can shove their law-suit up their anally-retentive, greed-obsessed arses.

Ro

I have one of those letters too, along with a poster with €127,000 in big letters, which is apparently the maximum fine you can get for downloading music off the internet.

I don't think the letters are aimed at people that have mp3 files on their PCs, rather the people that are downloading them off the internet illegally. I also think that IRMA are partially responsible for all these bad people downloading music off the Internet. If they encouraged the introduction of more legitimate download services here rather than raping people of their hard earned money by forcing them to pay €15 - €20 for a CD they wouldn't be in this situation.

The music industry in the US learned this the hard way and so will IRMA.

sceptre

MP3 players are legal for lots of reasons - primarily because they can be used for more than playing mp3 files that you've copied from a CD or grabbed from the net without having the right to do so. There's also a UK precedent in the Amstrad case of 1986ish where double deck tape players were found legal. Same thing really.

There's no fair use in UK or Irish law. So legally no, you're not allowed copy that CD you bought on to your HD or wherever. When you buy CD you're not really buying a licence, you're buying a CD. Restrictions with regard to where you can play that disc exist but they're confirmed by legislation, not a licensing procedure.

Obviously we all ignore most of this. I know I do.


Oh yeah - legend - U2 didn't charge you a fiver for that burger. The bloke who bought the right to sell the burger sold you that burger for a fiver. Besides, I'm sure there's a little difference between smoeone who can't eat as a result of a debt-ridden country pumping money into a national debt that will never go away and some bloke who managed to cough up the guts of fifty nicker for a ticket (I was there and can't remember how much the tickets were). Either way nothing to do with U2 - Dodgy Burgers Limited paid over the odds for that franchise on the assumption that people would want a burger and would cough up extra for it. I probably had a burger.

legend99

Had Bono had the guts to do the decent thing and decide to do a few events at cost..or announce all profits from the Slane home coming gigs would go to charity I'd have had a hell of a lot more respect from him. Its hard to listen to one of a group of 5 people (including Paul McGuiness) estiamted to be worth over 700 million Euro going on about debt rights.

Incidentally, I had a burger too. I was bloody starving.

Booster

Whats an MP3?;)

Lemming

Originally posted by sceptre
There's no fair use in UK or Irish law. So legally no, you're not allowed copy that CD you bought on to your HD or wherever. When you buy CD you're not really buying a licence, you're buying a CD. Restrictions with regard to where you can play that disc exist but they're confirmed by legislation, not a licensing procedure.

That would make VCR illegal, minidisc players would be dubious at best, given that the labels have produced very few actual album minidiscs despite having pushed the format, etc, etc, etc. ad finitum ad nauseum.

I find it very hard to believe that there is no right to even make a "back up" in Irish law. Now that's very much different to saying that fair-use has been tried in an Irish court of law, which to the best of my knowledge - and google - does not seem to be the case so far.

legend99

I know this for sure. Guy from IMRO was on Ray D'Arcy show one day on today fm. He said 100% it was illegal to say even copy from a CD you bought to a tape to play in the car.

Lemming

Originally posted by legend99
I know this for sure. Guy from IMRO was on Ray D'Arcy show one day on today fm. He said 100% it was illegal to say even copy from a CD you bought to a tape to play in the car.

tbh, the IMRO is full of sh*t. That sounds extrordinarily dodgy. There's no way that you can apply fair-use on one hand (eg. using a vcr to record a program off the tv - it's still copyrighted) and and not the other.

I would LOVE to hear IMRO-boy's answer to the following:

Since several major labels also produce MiniDisc players, and since very few commercial MiniDiscs have ever been produced, why are they selling them [the players]? And then also selling blank MiniDiscs? Even their marketing has been at recording your music onto MD and listening to it on the move.

chabsey

Hmmm...Now I know the only surefire way of avoiding getting nabbed would be to never download but I'm wondering about the practicality of actually chasing people.

If you use Kazaa then yes I'd presume it's easy enough to be caught, unless maybe you're using peer guardian (but that probably doesn't cover Irish IPs). What's the deal with Bittorrent and Emule (and it's like)?

Since you're never actually downloading an entire file off someone on those networks, you're only ever getting bits from different people. If they set up a honeypot server with loads of bait and someone get's 30 bytes of Britney Spears from it, 30 bytes from someone else and so on...what is the legal situation there? As far as I know it's not possible to convict someone of downloading a useless (on it's own) part of a song.

Silent Bob

Originally posted by legend99
I know this for sure. Guy from IMRO was on Ray D'Arcy show one day on today fm. He said 100% it was illegal to say even copy from a CD you bought to a tape to play in the car.

They also say it is illegal to download copyright material without the permission of the copyright owner :rolleyes:.

I thought this sounded a bit dodgy so I checked the COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS ACT, 2000

At no point anywhere in this document could I find anything which stated that receiving a transmission of a copyrighted work over any medium (including telecommunications networks) was deemed illegal.
It is very specific in saying that any attempt to transmit a copyrighted work, or cause the transmission of a copyrighted work without the copyright holders permission is illegal.

Ergo, it is illegal to offer music for download (i.e. share it), but it isn't illegal to download the music itself. For the same reason it is illegal to sell copyright infringing hard copies but it isn't illegal to buy them (this I know is correct).

It is illegal to possess a copyright infringing copy if you do so in the course of business, trade or profession, but not as a private citizen.

Lemming, backups of computer programs are expressly allowed. As are making copies of the work to facilitate time-shifting and space-shifting (this gives you VCRs, tape recorders, DAPs etc.). And also shows that the IMRO bloke on Today FM was talking out his arse.

And as a final scary parting thought, this act makes it illegal to have in your possession a protection circumvention device or to provide information or services to circumvent "rights protection measures".

Hooray, we live in a state that panders to the media pigopolists.

Of course, as with most things in life, IANAL.

RobertFoster

Quick, everyone get iTunes and convert their MP3 to AAC

Lemming

Originally posted by Silent Bob
At no point anywhere in this document could I find anything which stated that receiving a transmission of a copyrighted work over any medium (including telecommunications networks) was deemed illegal.

hmmm .. interesting take. Define a computer. A series of electronic components networked together to form a working computational device. So I can say taht I was simply receiving a transmission across a 'network ' from my cd drive to my hdd

(ok, maybe that's really stretching it ... and I'm beign humouress anyway ... )

It is illegal to possess a copyright infringing copy if you do so in the course of business, trade or profession, but not as a private citizen.

that's not entirely accurate. I think I recall seeing something about research purposes being allowed in my google-quest today.

Lemming, backups of computer programs are expressly allowed. As are making copies of the work to facilitate time-shifting and space-shifting (this gives you VCRs, tape recorders, DAPs etc.). And also shows that the IMRO bloke on Today FM was talking out his arse.

As I've said, the IMRO is full of sh*t anyway. Always was, is, and always will be (radical overhaul of both organisation and personnel not withstanding)

Silent Bob

Originally posted by Lemming
that's not entirely accurate. I think I recall seeing something about research purposes being allowed in my google-quest today.

Whoops, left out the usual journalistic/educational/librarian exemptions, my bad

RobertFoster

so could you say that you're doing research into the effects of listening to MP3's while working on a computer, taking into account the different types of music, including, but not limited to the repetition of some MP3 placed in a playlist called "favourites"?

Captain Trips

Yeah I read in numerous places that it's the transmission aka uploading/sharing that is illegal, not downloading.

Also, it would be a short day in court if they said anyone with MP3s on their hardrive were illegal - I download a lot of demoscene stuff from Tokyo 2051, Fairlight, etc., . All free and all Mp3 music. Recording your own band or demo on Mp3 could not be also illegal (yet, until the collective recording associations aroudn the world make it illegal to not be published by the respective association - I seriously think this could happen).

Me saying **** off you nazi ****ing recording association mother****ers and keeping it in MP3 form is not also illegal.

Not buying Beyonce or Britney is not illegal. Yet.

Duffman

Originally posted by Silent Bob
They also say it is illegal to download copyright material without the permission of the copyright owner :rolleyes:.

I thought this sounded a bit dodgy so I checked the COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS ACT, 2000

At no point anywhere in this document could I find anything which stated that receiving a transmission of a copyrighted work over any medium (including telecommunications networks) was deemed illegal.

Careful now I haven't read the act myself, but it may very well be that downloading music is not a criminal offence under statute, laws passed by the Oireactas.

This does not mean it isn't illegal however... Artists, the IMRO or whoever can still sue you under private law and probably claim large damages in the process..

Just in case that post gave anyone a false sense of security

Col_Loki

can still sue you under private law

Well then doesent that also mean the whole 1 year in jail crap doesent apply

On a slightly different note, arent these the guys who went around to company's telling them they must pay a licence for having a radio playing on there premises? They got alot of F*ck off's and abuse with what seemed to be a minority actually paying the fee......... nothing was done in any of the cases of company's who didnt pay in my area anyway and i know this for a fact.
Cant see this working out for them TBH, and the fines look totally stupid and crazy.... well blown out of context.

Do you think with the level of this around that anyone is going to go to jail? If someone does get a sentence like that for MP3's while other people get away with murder, the justice system would just be a joke (not that it isint at the min).

SantaHoe

Knife-point-rapist: So what're you in for?
Joe-Bloggs: Downloading rare Bob Marley B-sides that are no longer available to buy in the shops.

Although this could be a good thing for us all...
I wonder if they arrested some joy-riders that had a copied tape playing in the car at the time - they'd actually get more than a suspended sentence.
Hmmm.

I think everyone should stop downloading MP3's just so the recording industry plebs will realise that it's not filesharing losing them profits, it's the crap music they're releasing that nobody wants to buy.
Who downloads chart music anyway?
Just arrest Louis Walsh and similar spawn of satan - problem solved.

Col_Loki

lmao, very nicely put !!

CyberGhost

damn!!!!! fianlly is reached to us!!!!! DAMN!!!!!!!!

what doess IRMA stand for?

Adeptus Titanicus

Originally posted by CyberGhost
what doess IRMA stand for?

Intellectually Regressed Music Assassins?

Mutant_Fruit

...rather than raping people of their hard earned money by forcing them to pay €15 - €20 for a CD they wouldn't be in this situation[/B]

Are you mad man! Those prices are insane for new cd's. Typically they cost about 25eur, and i've seen a brand-spanking new cd go for 32eur once! Thats insane pricing!

sceptre

Originally posted by Lemming
That would make VCR illegal, minidisc players would be dubious at best, given that the labels have produced very few actual album minidiscs despite having pushed the format, etc, etc, etc. ad finitum ad nauseum.

The formats aren't illegal. MP3 isn't illegal - it's merely a method of compressing audio files. It's what you do with it that counts. That's precisely what came up in the Amstrad case in the UK and the Sony case in the US (fair use wasn't considered in the Sony case - it didn't have to be though in any case it was enshrined in statute over there). And yes, people are always surprised to find out that there aren't any fair use provisions in Irish or UK law comparable to provisions in the US 1976 Copyright Act.

I find it very hard to believe that there is no right to even make a "back up" in Irish law. Now that's very much different to saying that fair-use has been tried in an Irish court of law, which to the best of my knowledge - and google - does not seem to be the case so far.

There hasn't been a reported reference case because it's laid out perfectly clearly in statute. Obviously people have been prosecuted for being in breach of provisions of our copyright acts. No-one has been prosecuted for copying a CD to a tape and listening to it in the car. That's not to say they couldn't be (because they could) but take that up with your TD. There are a number of limited rights for copying academic articles, limited sections from books and licences for making a single archival backup of software have been allocated by copyright holders. Nevertheless if you own the copyright you have the right to retain or allocate any of those rights unless your rights have been restricted by statute. And except in a small few situations (including the two I mentioned above) they haven't been.


For the people that asked, info on IRMA and IMRO is available frmo their respective webpages. It was IMRO who went around to the shops. IRMA are the evil ones.

Silent Bob

I would be very interested in how copyright laws apply to routers.

Say you buy a licence for some computer program or MP3 or whatever. The only reason you need a licence for a computer program is because of the way it gets copied through the hierarchy of memories in order to execute. These temporary, intermediate copies are considered copies and need permission from the copyright holder.

Now, imagine you buy an MP3 from some website somewhere (for the sake of argument, iTunes). For me to reach Apples servers I end up going through about 13 routers. Each one of those routers is going to store and forward the data on its way back to me. The proxy that I go through may also very well cache the data.

It would seem that current copyright laws are completely unable to deal with this situation. You can't very well sue every single router admin, especially since they cross multiple jurisdictions.

Silent Bob

LOL! straight from the IRMA site, one of their aims is

Fighting piracy in its every form in Ireland.

Let that be a warning to anybody considering raiding other vessels in the Irish sea, IRMA are coming after you and you can't hide

Töpher

ROFLMFAO!

Lemming

Arrrrrrrr!! There be a change in the wind a'comin' says I?!!

What's that? Ye farted? Arrrrrrrrrr

Giblet

Anyone watch primetime, talking about illegal downloading, I especially love how he answers the question "Should we targets 12 year olds like in America?" "Well a 12 year old could be a serial downloader!"

My god!

Thomas Brunkard and Conal from mgs were there to talk sense, and also get mike got spiked pimped, good work.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0415/primetime.html

Civilian_Target

Lets face it guys. They can write all the nasty letters they want but do you honestly thing the Gardai are going to bust down your door, freeze your bank accound and sieze your PC because you copied a couple of CDs? Don't think so.

Even if they do seize your PC, they still have to prove that every file on it is illegal, if you can show them an original copy, receipt, etc. it's not illegal. Thats assuming they can get into your PC in the first place, I seem to remember them having particular difficulty with their own computer systems.

My reading of things is that you need to be a pretty serious pirate or selling your CDs to actually be raided in Ireland.

Nick_oliveri

Should be an anti-IMRO petition. I'd sign it and so should every other mp3 enthusiast. But how to get it heard. Whoever that would host it would have to be carefull not to get sued for spamming. This disgracefull govenment,country and world is trying to control when we urinate and deficate. While REAL CRIME ie. rape,torturing innocent puppies, those who ask "what are you looking at" before they pound you for nothing, burgluary, selling drugs that kill and charging people ridiculous prices for stupid crap, basically anti-morality is all being looked on as profitable. For what? Building a bridge from a hotel to a tent in my hometown for the EU summit sh1te, even tho the street is already closed down!!!! Riiiiigght. It will never really make sense if those who see a bargain and take advantage,save their hard earned money, that they dont get a lot of, get thrown in jail,or a big fine that goes to the government. I blame the atrists for speaking out on behalf of these corporate arse maggots. What artist that has a widely played song on the radio or a video on Mtv is living in a council house, scraping by, without a chreche in their community to throw their kids into while going to work. But if these assholes and you are getting your house robbed at the same time, Whos the pigs gonna come to first? You or them? If you dont got any money, nobody cares. Anyone know if IRC XDCC file sending is in danger of being affected? Corporate Ireland. Sounds sh1t to me.

conZ

Hah. I'd like to see someone get busted for this.

If they come to my house with a warrant and a fine for a couple of hundred thousand I'll be straight into My Computer to format F:/

tuxy

Originally posted by conZ
Hah. I'd like to see someone get busted for this.

If they come to my house with a warrant and a fine for a couple of hundred thousand I'll be straight into My Computer to format F:/

you think when a drive is formated the info is gone for good?

Nuphor

Originally posted by conZ
Hah. I'd like to see someone get busted for this.

If they come to my house with a warrant and a fine for a couple of hundred thousand I'll be straight into My Computer to format F:/

Followed by cipher /w:F\ am I right?

I say good luck to them. The only ones I can see getting slapped with a fine or jail sentence are mass file sharers on any of the P2P networks. And, lets face it, Kazaa users aren't exactly known for encoding audio MP3's at -aps now, are they?

God bless Usenet

Nick_oliveri

Hmmm. Is it just mp3's in general or are we talking rar,tar etc. Wonder whats the law with them. Im sorry to say im a leecher, not a sharer, and if that gets me off the hook,so be it.

Silent Bob

Originally posted by Duffman
Careful now I haven't read the act myself, but it may very well be that downloading music is not a criminal offence under statute, laws passed by the Oireactas.

This does not mean it isn't illegal however... Artists, the IMRO or whoever can still sue you under private law and probably claim large damages in the process..

Just in case that post gave anyone a false sense of security

I just had a conversation with a lawyer friend (who has an interest in copyright law, particularly how it interacts with the Internet). Basically, it isn't illegal to just possess copyright infringing material in Ireland and there hasn't been a successful civil suit against someone for possession of copyright infringing material. Even if there was I am told the chances of success are very low, as are the potential penalties.

I wish the recording association would just stop with the rhetoric. If you really want to sell more stuff, lower the prices. We don't buy the argument that file-trading networks fundamentally damage sales (especially when stuff like this is being published). People like to be law abiding. People don't like to be fleeced. If you can sell an album for €6 in Asia-pacific countries then why not here too?

neokenzo

I think they want to follow the States. I read over the net that in the States that they are now busting ppl who DOWNLOADS mp3's over the net. But it only applied to downloads. Nothing saying that if you have the CD and copied it to your hdd. I think its a scare tactic and trying to push thier luck a bit too much.

Johnny Versace

You're not going to go to jail for downloading MP3's.

If scumbags can mug people and get a suspended sentence, a couple (or a hundred/whatever) illegal MP3's will not give you jail time.